Sometime in late May or early June, Salt Lake City-based Epic Brewing, known for its series of Brainless fruit beers, will brew its first batch in Denver, in a soaring old warehouse building it is renovating in the River North neighborhood.

By July, Epic plans to begin distributing all of its beers in Denver with Elite Brands (it currently distributes only in northern Colorado) and by September, the company hopes to open a planned 100-seat wood-and-steel taproom to showcase its brews.

The taproom, which will also sell bomber bottles to go, will probably be open seven days a week, something that Cole says is important. "People come to Colorado for the beer now, all week long, and you want them to be able to say they tried our beer."

The brewery will also release three Colorado-specific beers on draft and in bottles, a lager, a pale ale and an IPA called Escape to Colorado, pending label approval.

"Denver has been so welcoming. The beer community has embraced us so far," says David Cole, who co-founded Epic in Salt Lake City in 2008. That attitude has been different than in Utah, where liquor laws have made it difficult for Epic to operate.

Because of the restrictions it has faced -- Epic isn't allowed to charge money for its beers, for instance -- the company has been looking to open a second facility for nearly two years. It targeted Colorado and California, and decided on Denver last winter.

Once it is finished, the $2 million project, will include a twenty-barrel brewhouse and 560 barrels-worth of fermentation capacity, meaning it will be able to brew 6,000 to 8,000 barrels annually. But Epic has room to expand its capacity to 2,500 barrels, which would give it the ability to brew 25,000-30,000 barrels per year. (Epic currently brews about 13,000 barrels of beer annually in Salt Lake City.)
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Epic also has 100 bourbon barrels on order for barrel-aging.

Once the brewery in Denver is up and running, Epic head brewer Kevin Crompton will oversee both operations from an administrative standpoint, while Kyle Rossman, who relocated from Utah to Colorado, will become the head brewer in Denver.